


Eve

by ardenrabbit



Series: Gift for Ran [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Christmas Eve, Family Fluff, M/M, they adopted a galra baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:55:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23196667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardenrabbit/pseuds/ardenrabbit
Summary: This is an incredibly late christmas exchange gift for Ran! I wanted to do two pieces for her, so I finished this one on time, and the other took me three months, but I wanted to post them at the same time. This one is just what the tags say!Ran is amazing and her writing is incredible. She's one of the people who made the vld fandom so fun and welcoming for me. Thank you so much, girl <3
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: Gift for Ran [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1667689
Comments: 8
Kudos: 43





	Eve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ran](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ran/gifts).



The chocolate chip cookies were still warm when it was time for Max to go to sleep. Lance was humming ‘Carol of the Bells’ under his breath while he wiped the flour off the kitchen counters, and it was Keith’s job that night to put their son to bed. Max had wandered back into the living room to marvel at the Christmas tree lights and the stockings on the mantle, each one lovingly stitched with a name in red thread, and then made his way back to the kitchen counter to reach up toward the plate of cookies.

“Sorry, buddy,” Keith chuckled. He scooped him up under his arms and held him to his chest, and Max cried out in dismay when this put him further away from his goal. “You already brushed your teeth, and those are for Santa. And you already had three.”

“No Santa,” Max argued morosely. “Mine.”

“Tomorrow,” Keith promised, but he was coming to terms with the fact that toddlers didn’t think in the long term. Patience wasn’t one of Max’s virtues. His bottom lip trembled, his yellow eyes scowled, and his soft ears flattened downward in displeasure.

Next step would be the screaming. Keith wasn’t excited to weather that on Christmas Eve. Before Max could start wailing for his papa to take his side, Keith snuck one of the cookies from the plate and hurried back down the hall. Once he’d set Max in his crib, he broke the cookie in half and passed one side to him.

“If I’m stealing cookies from Santa for you,” Keith told him, “you have to share with me.” Half a cookie was still half a cookie, and Max grunted agreement and shoved it into his mouth.

Keith knew he spoiled this kid rotten. As doting a parent as Lance was, he was usually the one who had to put his foot down. Lance knew how kids and families worked. Keith didn’t. He was fumbling his way through fatherhood, but he would rather err on the side of giving Max too much instead of too little.

Keith finished his half of the cookie before Max could ask for that too, and he wiped the crumbs off his violet cheeks for him. He wouldn’t make him brush his teeth again; it wouldn’t kill them to skip it once. He pulled the blanket over his son and started to tuck him in, but Max complained and sat up. Before Keith could question him, Max gripped the crib railing and stood up to reach toward him.

That wasn’t his ‘I want to get out of my crib and cause havoc’ reach. That was just his ‘I want a hug’ reach, the one that still caught Keith off guard.

They had only found Max a few months ago, one of many abandoned children in a decommissioned Galra military academy, but that was the same plaintive, trusting look and gesture he had given Keith in the middle of the rescue operation. Most of the other kids had been older, but “Myriax” had still had trouble walking by himself, and he had reached straight up for Keith to carry him out of that lightless place.

Keith had taken personal charge of him and gone straight to Lance. They had barely been married for a year, and he had always known that Lance wanted kids. Keith had thought that he wasn’t ready, until he couldn’t bear to be parted from Max.

He bent down and hugged him. Max only had the armspan to hug Keith’s neck, but Keith gathered him up and squeezed him.

“Goodnight, Max,” he mumbled.

“G’night, Dad.”

Keith set him back down, smiled at his increasingly sleepy face, and kissed his forehead.

“Merry Christmas, son.”

“Merry Kirshmast,” Max repeated. Keith laughed under his breath and tried again at tucking him in. Max cooperated that time, and he grabbed at his stuffed lion toy and pulled it into his arms. Shockingly, Max loved lions. By the time Keith stepped back into the hall and softly shut the door, Max had accepted how tired he was and shut his eyes.

Lance was still humming when Keith returned to the kitchen. He had moved onto the more obnoxious Christmas songs with the artificially boisterous melodies, and as much as Keith hated those songs, they were almost repaired and redeemed by virtue of Lance singing them. He stepped up behind Lance, wrapped his arms around his middle, and lay his cheek across the back of his shoulder, and Lance’s humming lilted out of the tune and into a happy sigh. He stopped wiping down the counter long enough to set a hand on Keith’s arm, holding the hug in place.

“Thank you,” Lance uttered. He was warm and smelled like cinnamon, and Keith didn’t want to lift his head away from him to answer, so he mumbled into the shoulder of Lance’s sweater.

“For what?”

“For…” Lance waved his hand once at the space around them. “All of this. Doing Christmas with me. I know you could take it or leave it, but it means a lot to me.”

Lance was right. Christmas had been less of a chapter and more of a footnote in Keith’s life while he had grown up, and by the time he had become better acquainted with the concept, it just didn’t seem worth the investment anymore. The traditions weren’t relatable to him.

But that was before Keith had experienced Christmas with his new family. The paladins made it special. The McClains made it special.

“It means a lot to me when it’s with you,” Keith replied.

Lance hummed. He straightened away from the counter and turned around in Keith's arms to face him, and he gazed at him with an easy, peculiar smile.

"You went all-out this year," Lance noted.

"I didn't do much," Keith replied, bashful.

"You whittled Christmas tree ornaments," Lance reminded him, "and bought Myriax like, eighteen bajillion presents. And you've finally accepted Santa into your heart."

"It's his first Christmas," Keith defended. "And Santa's a rite of passage or something, right? Figuring out he's not real?" 

It felt wrong to deceive their child about an elderly man breaking into their house once a year, but Lance had strong opinions about the mythology.

"Santa lives in all of us," Lance replied sagely.

Keith wrinkled his nose. "I don't think I want him to."

"Too bad, and too late. You've become Santa."

"I'm not wearing the hat," Keith said for the fifth time, though Lance kept trying. 

Lance squinted at him and settled on, "We'll work up to it."

Lance had flour on his face, just a fine dusting of it directly in the middle of his left cheek. It was such a lovely, warm spot to be, and Keith couldn't blame the flour for clinging so tightly in an attempt to stay there. He gazed at the soft highlight it made on Lance's skin until Lance tilted his head to catch his eyes again.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Lance asked. His voice had gone quiet, and the mellower side of his playfulness became apparent. Keith glimpsed it in these quiet, private moments where Lance set down his usual big talk and cockiness. The years had instilled a steady, modest confidence in him, and it had to be one of his most attractive features.

Keith took to studying his eyes, halfway between blue and grey in the neutral kitchen light. They didn't need to be the bluest things in the universe, the be-all, end-all to all other blue. They were Lance's eye color.

"You're beautiful," Keith said simply.

"You noticed that?" Lance purred. So the cockiness never quite went away. Keith liked that too.

“I might’ve,” Keith replied with a small, crooked smile, and Lance laughed and leaned in for a kiss. Keith met him happily, soft and content to suit the rest of the evening. It was such an easy moment to indulge in, and Keith shut his eyes and let his fingertips creep into Lance’s hair. When they parted again, it wasn’t by much, and Lance favored him with another kiss on the tip of his nose.

“Santa has cookies to eat,” Lance reminded him.

“Santa’s going to leave them for Max,” Keith said. He had promised there would be some left.

“Mrs. Claus is going to bake plenty more tomorrow,” Lance countered. “It’s gonna be a full house.” That sneaky smile spread across Lance’s face then, and he regarded Keith with a degree more mischief. “I know you got _everyone_ presents from Santa.”

“Well, they deserve it.”

“That’s exactly what Santa would say.”

Keith snorted and dodged Lance to go to the hall closet, where a tower of presents in designated Santa wrapping paper stood waiting. As he took them out and arranged them under the tree, Lance took down the stockings, sat on the couch, and filled them with little presents and candy from another box.

“You’re in for a treat tomorrow,” Lance said. Keith was kneeling on the carpet, trying to stack the presents as presentably as possible, and looked back at him.

“What, Christmas?”

“Max’s first Christmas,” Lance specified. “Seeing someone you love have their first big family Christmas. The look on their face is…” Lance trailed off and smiled, but he kept his eyes on the task of hooking candy canes over the rim of a stocking.

All Lance said was, “You’ll see.”


End file.
